EPISODE 144 These Foolish Things…Remind Me of U..tah.

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From Erica Wides herself:

Speaking of soda, and Mormons, (we are, in today’s show) in yesterday’s edition of the paper of record there was an article about a lawsuit that is raging between two Utah drink companies, Swig v. Sodalicious. Have you heard of either of these chains? No, you wouldn’t unless you lived in the Mormon enclaves of Utah. Swig and Sodalicous are drinks stores, much like Starbucks, but they sell giant cups of soda, mega-slushies, so-called “energy” drinks, and giant cookies.

What differentiates them from say, just a 7-11, is that they customize giant soda drinks with flavored syrups and added creaminess, to make what they call “dirty” sodas. The dirty being the Mormon version of acting slightly naughty in their squeaky-clean seeming lives. (Although I got some of the dirt on actual Mormon naughtiness from a very chatty ex-Mormon massage therapist one night, and hoo boy, the hypocrisy) Anyway, adding shots of sweetened, sugary, coconut, strawberry, red velvet, or blue raspberry syrups (among hundreds of other options) to ALREADY super-sweet soda bases, is what makes them “dirty”, they’ll also throw in a shot of half n half or cream too, too make them even dirtier, and the Mormon kids are LOVING this shit. It’s their Starbucks.

They get to customize their drinks, too. Just like us! One regular customer was quoted: “I go there on my way to work and on my way home from work,” said Britni (!) Perry, 33, a Swig fan who works at a prison not far from her preferred soda stop. She orders a Dirty Dr Pepper (soda, coconut syrup) in the morning and a Mountain Dew Fruit Loop (soda and strawberry, peach and watermelon syrups) in the evening.This is some seriously sick shit. Like soda alone isn’t sugary-gross enough, these freaks are doctoring it up with MORE syrupy nastiness? Oh and what about the lawsuit I mentioned? Well the legal fight is over the word “dirty”, A lawsuit between the two chains is raging over the use of DIRTY. And who has the right to use it, to describe their doctored up soda nightmares.

As if drinking the soda isn’t enough, actual businesses exist to make it worse, sell it in huge plastic cups that get tossed away onto the Utah roadside, and now a legal battle rages over a word. So this is what we’ve come to; members of a religious, sugar-addicted cult, fighting it out over a word that they’re using incorrectly to begin with. Not like a dirty martini, or a dirty movie or a bomb, no. Dirty soda. Soda is already dirty, it’s sweetened polluted water. Think of the resources, the water, the packaging, the petroleum products that go into this pointless industrial nightmare business. Then add a pointless, frivolous lawsuit, a shot of coconut-flavored syrup, and you’ve got America in one big plastic cup. Sweetened, plastic, pointless, frivolous, empty caloric junk.

Know what’s actually dirty? Shooting at people at a clinic that provides health care. That’s dirty. Claiming an alliance with 100 black ministers who never made that alliance. That’s dirty. Vowing to not allow any refugees from terribly war-torn, dangerous countries into your vast nation of immigrants. That’s dirty. Adding a shot of blue-velvet, cherry, marshmallow, twinkie flavored crap to a vat of sugar water? That’s just stupid.